The Colour of the Soul Read online

  The Colour of the Soul

  Richard. T. Burke

  First Edition: April 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Richard. T. Burke

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Printing: 2018

  www.rjne.uk

  Other books by Richard T. Burke:

  The Rage

  Decimation: The Girl Who Survived

  For Judith

  Thanks for your support

  The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

  Lucian Freud

  Chapter 1

  The woman held the syringe by her side and glanced backwards to confirm she was alone. Hospital policy meant she had no reason to fear surveillance cameras, only the presence of prying human eyes. Satisfied she wasn’t being observed, she strode into the ward, the soles of her flat-heeled shoes squeaking on the cream tiled flooring. It was important to give the impression of normality; creeping about would only mark her behaviour as suspicious.

  Beads of rain smeared the glow from the car park lights, casting a subtly shifting orange pattern on the walls. A dimly lit bulb mounted above each of the four beds supplemented the meagre illumination from outside. At just after three o’clock in the morning, most of the patients in the hospital were fast asleep, but none of the residents of this ward had opened their eyes even once since being admitted.

  Beside each bed, a bank of machines signalled the occupant’s status in a bewildering array of pulsing colours. Several beeped in a muted rhythm, blending with the clicking valves and periodic wheezing of the artificial respirators as they worked tirelessly to keep their charges alive. The discordant tones reminded her of the moments before the start of a concert, the low murmur of the audience mingling with the sounds of the orchestra tuning up.

  She crossed the room and stood beside the furthest bed. The sharp tang of disinfectant tickled the back of her throat. She stared down at the unconscious teenage girl who lay with arms resting atop the white sheet.

  It might appear to an uninformed observer that the patient was simply asleep. Her serene expression belied the fact she had been in a coma for the past eleven months, monitored by the unwavering technology at her bedside. Unlike two of her fellow inmates, she breathed without mechanical assistance. Thin plastic tubing snaked from a white dressing just below her shoulder up to the bag of clear fluid hanging from the drip stand. In a few minutes, it would no longer be necessary.

  The woman’s head jerked up as a sudden flurry of raindrops pelted against the window. The droplets merged to form a rivulet before zig-zagging down the pane. She exhaled shakily and lowered her eyes to the instrument readouts. The heart rate monitor indicated a steady fifty-one beats per minute, as it had done for many weeks. Oxygen levels were normal. Other than the absence of high-level brain activity, the patient seemed perfectly healthy.

  The woman refocused her attention on the bed and brushed a stray strand of hair from the girl’s face onto the pillow. Her lips barely moved as she stooped to whisper in the teenager’s ear.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s time. They can’t keep you lingering here between life and death forever. And if they won’t make a decision, then I will.”

  “Rest in peace, Annalise, darling,” she murmured, running her fingers down the warm skin of the girl’s cheek.

  She straightened, inserted the syringe needle into the drip bag and depressed the plunger.

  ***

  It started as a recurring, high-pitched screech, the insistent warning blaring out once a second. Within moments, another machine detected an anomaly and added its own cry for attention. The sound of running feet was barely audible above the wailing cacophony.

  “Shut that bloody din off,” a male voice commanded.

  The irregular bleeps of the button presses mingled with the avalanche of noise until first one then the other alarm fell silent. The resident physician, a man in his late twenties, and a female nurse who was five years older, stood over the unconscious girl.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” the doctor asked.

  “Pulse is erratic at forty BPM. Actually, make that thirty-seven. Oxygen levels are crashing. There’s no indication of the cause.”

  “Is there anything special in the drip?”

  “Just the usual total parenteral nutrition,” the nurse replied.

  “Remove the damned thing—at least until we have a handle on what’s behind this. Let’s also get the resuscitation team over here right away. It looks like we might need them. Oh, and prepare a syringe of epinephrine.”

  The nurse hesitated. “Um ... are you sure you want to do this? I mean, she’s been in a coma for so long. Don’t you think it would be kinder to just let her go?”

  The doctor raised his eyes from the patient and fixed them on the nurse’s anxious face. “That’s not your decision to make. Now do your job.”

  The woman blinked and half opened her mouth to reply. With a brief shake of the head, she hurried away to the phone. The doctor turned his back on her, the previous conversation already wiped from his mind. He withdrew a torch from his pocket and raised the girl’s eyelid. He flashed a beam of light, first in one eye and then in the other. “Pupils totally unresponsive,” he muttered to himself. “Not entirely unexpected in the circumstances, I suppose.”

  The machine monitoring the patient’s pulse awoke from its muted state and emitted a continuous tone.

  “Cardiac arrest,” the doctor yelled. He glanced over his shoulder at the returning nurse. “Where the hell is that crash team?”

  She handed a syringe of clear liquid to him. “They’re on their way. They’ll be here in a minute.”

  “We can’t afford to wait.”

  The white-coated man held the syringe like a dagger and plunged the needle directly into the patient’s heart. He depressed the plunger with his thumb in one steady movement. When it was empty, he deposited it into the metal tray the nurse now presented to him.

  “Starting CPR,” he announced. Positioning the palm of his right hand in the centre of the girl’s chest, he placed his left hand on top, laced the fingers together, and pressed down hard in slow, repetitive strokes. His eyes remained fixed on the heart monitor readout.

  “Still no pulse. Where are they?”

  The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps accompanied by the squeak of trolley wheels answered his question.

  “Not before time,” he murmured, continuing the chest compressions.

  Two women in blue uniforms rushed to the opposite side of the bed and readied the machine.

  “She’s been in ventricular fibrillation for about thirty seconds,” the doctor said, glancing across at the newcomers. “I’ve already given her a shot of epinephrine.”

  “Give us a sec,” the taller of the two replied, opening the unconscious teenager’s hospital gown. She grasped an orange paddle in each hand and waited while her colleague adjusted the defibrillator settings. The doctor maintained his focus on rhythmically pumping the girl’s heart.

  The nurse by the control unit looked up and nodded her readiness.

  “Clear,” the paddle operator called.

  The doctor took a step backwards and raised his hands to indicate he was no longer in contact with the patient.

  The resuscitation nur
se placed the paddles diagonally opposite each other on the patient’s chest. She depressed the yellow button with her thumb.

  The girl arched her spine then sank back to the bed. All eyes in the room stared at the heart monitor.

  “Still nothing,” the doctor said.

  The woman lifted the orange plastic handles. “Increase it by twenty joules.” She waited for her colleague to adjust the machine.

  “Clear.”

  A jolt of energy surged through the unconscious teenager’s body.

  Once again, the display became the centre of attention.

  The doctor shook his head.

  “Give it thirty more,” the nurse commanded. As soon as the other woman’s fingers had entered the new value, she triggered another electric shock.

  Every one of the girl’s muscles seemed to contract. Her back lifted off the mattress.

  An erratic sequence of pulses scrolled across the screen of the heart monitor. Over the course of the next five seconds, the irregular peaks settled into a steady pattern.

  The doctor exhaled the breath he had been holding. “We’ve got a regular pulse,” he announced. “Well done, everybody.”

  The woman returned the paddles to the carry case. “All in a day’s—or should I say a night’s—work. We’ll hang around for a few more minutes just to be sure.”

  “Thanks,” the doctor said. “I better write this up.”

  He was halfway to the workstation when a voice stopped him in his tracks. “Doctor, I think you should see this.”

  The crash team nurse who had adjusted the machine gestured towards the girl. At first, the doctor couldn’t identify the subject of her interest. The woman pointed again. “Look. Her fingers are moving.”

  The man frowned and studied the patient’s left hand. As he watched, her forefinger twitched. “But that’s ...”

  His voice tailed off. For the second time that night, he retrieved the torch. He lifted an eyelid and swept the beam across the girl’s eye. The pupil at the centre of the flecked brown iris contracted in size. With mounting excitement, he repeated the process on the other eye and observed the same reaction.

  “I’m not sure I quite believe it, but there’s a pupillary response. I checked her myself when the alarm went off, and there was definitely nothing then. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was regaining consciousness.”

  All attention focused on the girl. She burst into a fit of coughing. Her eyes blinked open, jittering from side to side in panic. She gagged, and her hands shot up to grasp the doctor’s arm.

  “Just try to relax,” he said. “Take deep breaths. Nurse, will you bring some water please?”

  The patient met his sympathetic gaze. He raised her head, accepted the proffered glass and tilted it to her mouth.

  “Little sips only.”

  Gradually the coughing fit subsided. She sank onto the pillow.

  “Welcome back to the world of the living,” the doctor said. “Can you understand me?”

  After several seconds, she nodded.

  “I’m afraid your throat will be sore for a few days, but we’ll administer painkillers to help with that.”

  The girl glanced around at her surroundings. “Where—?” she rasped. The question morphed into another cough.

  “You’re in hospital. You’ve been here for ...” He shot a look at the woman standing opposite. “... well, for a while. It’s probably best if you don’t try to talk for the moment. I’m just going to give you a quick check over.”

  He turned his attention to the heart monitor. The girl’s eyes followed him. The display indicated a regular cyclic pattern. Next, he grabbed the stethoscope from the pocket of his white coat and held it to her chest. He angled his head as he focused on the sound of her breathing.

  After a moment, he met the teenager’s anxious gaze. “Well, everything sounds normal. Does it hurt anywhere? Just point if it does.”

  Her hand moved to the area of skin where the faint pink outline of the defibrillator paddle stood out.

  “Yes, that’s going to be painful for a day or two. It’s where they placed the machine that restarted your heart. We can put some cream on it that should help.”

  The girl’s face clouded in bewilderment.

  “Your heart stopped for a few seconds, but we managed to get it started again.”

  “Not that.” The words came out as a coarse whisper. She tilted her head to one side and studied the doctor from the corner of her eye. Her hand rose shakily and pointed to a spot behind him. “Colours,” she croaked.

  A look of confusion spread across the doctor’s face. “Did you say colours? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Flickering colours.” The girl repeated the same process, inspecting each of the nurses in turn. “You too.”

  “You’re telling me you can see flickering colours?”

  She nodded.

  The man hesitated. “You’ve been in a coma for quite some time. It may take a while for things to ...”

  He turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. The soles of the newcomer’s shoes squeaked on the floor. She was in her mid-forties judging by the grey streaks in her dark, shoulder-length hair. The black skirt and navy blue cardigan reminded him of a mourner at a funeral. The woman’s tense expression reinforced the overall impression.

  “You can’t come in here,” he said. His gaze wandered from her face to the identity badge on her chest. The name tag read Sophie Becker in large text alongside a slightly blurred photograph.

  “Is she dead?” The woman ignored the doctor’s statement and approached the bed. “I saw the call for the crash cart on the system and—”

  “Who are you?” the doctor asked, but he had already guessed the answer.

  She covered her mouth at the sight of the girl’s open eyes staring back at her.

  “Mum?” the girl rasped.

  The woman lowered her hand and stepped forwards. “Annalise, darling, you’re awake.”

  Chapter 2

  The top right corner of the computer screen displayed a man’s face and beside it the words, ‘Welcome John’. The picture bore no resemblance to the person studying the display. Neither was the name correct. As a further measure to ensure anonymity, the internet connection was encrypted and routed through several intermediate servers in foreign countries making it practically impossible for anybody to trace his location. A stylised banner announced the title of the website: ‘Together Forever’. A pink heart shape surrounded the first letter of each word. Beneath the logo, the tagline read, ‘Every great relationship begins somewhere. Start something special today.’

  A photograph of a smiling girl stared out from the left half of the screen. Steven leaned in to examine her features more closely. Her hair was a mousy brown colour, tied back in a ponytail. She had an attractive face with hazel eyes and pencil-thin eyebrows, but her nose was too long and her chin slightly too rounded for his taste.

  The right side contained a short biography and described her interests. ‘Occupation: student,’ he read. ‘Age: Nineteen. Birth sign: Libra. Catherine enjoys reading, country walks and holding hands on the beach.’

  “Not exactly the life and soul of the party,” Steven muttered to himself. He scrolled down to a section labelled Conversations and clicked the plus symbol to expand the most recent. After the initial chit-chat came the part that mattered.

  John: So do you want to get together sometime?

  Catherine: Yes Y not

  John: OK. How about The Spotted Goose in Steadmore on Tuesday at 7:30 pm?

  Catherine: Sounds gr8. Looking fwd to meet

  John: Me too

  Catherine: How will I recgnz you

  John: My profile photo?

  Catherine: Lol CU Tuesday

  Steven frowned. He found it immensely irritating when people used abbreviations such as ‘Y not’ and ‘gr8’. Surely it wasn’t too much trouble to spell the words out in full. If he had been using the website to find a soul mate,
he would already have discarded this girl. But that was not his purpose tonight. He bit down on his irritation and glanced at his watch: six-twenty-five. He would have to leave soon if he was not to be late. The agreed meeting place was only four or five miles from his flat, but he wouldn’t be leaving the car anywhere nearby. He had carefully studied the adjacent streets and had discovered a route that avoided the grid of closed-circuit television cameras that spread across the city like a cancer.

  At seven thirty, the pub would be relatively quiet, not that he had any intention of entering. There was, however, the risk of being remembered by bystanders. To avoid any such circumstances, he had chosen clothing with dark colours that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. To further reduce the chances of being identified, he had purchased a wig that would change the colour of his light brown hair to black and make it several inches longer. He had also shopped online to buy a pair of plastic-rimmed glasses with clear lenses and a fake beard. He wore a set of prosthetic insoles to increase his apparent height by half an inch. The final stage of his disguise was a black woollen hat that, together with his gloves, occupied the pocket of his navy blue anorak.

  His heart beat faster in anticipation. With a conscious effort, he calmed his breathing. If he became too excited, he would make a mistake, and that was something he couldn’t afford. There would be plenty of time afterwards to savour the moment. He might even record some mobile phone footage, but that would depend upon how smoothly the operation proceeded.

  He clicked the print button and waited for the printer to spit out the sheet containing the details of the girl he would meet that evening.

  ***

  Steven stood on the pedestrianised road and pretended to study the photographs of the over-priced houses in the estate agent’s window. His eyes focused not on the property particulars but on the reflection of the pub entrance. On the pavement outside, a wooden board displayed a hand-written message in coloured chalk. He reversed the letters and reassembled the words in his head. Live Music. Bass Desires. 8 pm until late.